The fact that Pristine Audio’s unique selling point is its audio restoration
might be sufficient justification to start any review of its products with
a discussion about sound quality. But, in addition to that, any pre-1950 Toscanini
recording is also likely to have some very specific issues of sound quality
that need to be addressed and so the whole issue takes on an even greater
significance.

Although the recording venue of these radio broadcasts isn’t specified
here, I’m assuming that it’s likely to have been Studio 8H in
the Rockefeller Center’s GE Building (known at that time as the RCA
Building) in New York City. While today’s US TV viewers will be most
familiar with that as the recording venue for the massively popular show Saturday
Night Live, audiophiles will always associate its famously dry acoustic
with the many broadcasts made by the NBC Symphony Orchestra and its legendary
conductor Arturo Toscanini between 1937 and 1950. Many of these were subsequently
issued on disc. Although the minimal degree of reverberation may sound odd
to ears that are unused to it, the aural clarity apparently appealed greatly
to Toscanini, who would certainly have been able to initiate changes should
he have been dissatisfied with the sound. [There is a fascinating discussion
of Studio 8H in Mortimer H. Frank’s authoritative study Arturo Toscanini:
the NBC years (Portland, Oregon, 2002), pp. 33-35 and 245-248.] In fact,
the spare, rather sharp-edged quality of the recordings actually suits the
conductor’s incisive and thrusting accounts of these two Brahms works
very well.

Toscanini seems to have been especially fond of the Double Concerto. It was,
in fact, the only concerto by any composer that he included in the series
of ten television concerts he gave in the late 1940s and early 1950s, all
of which were thankfully preserved and are currently available on five Testament
DVDs, SBDVD 1003 - SBDVD 1007. The soloists in both the 1939 recording under
consideration and the TV broadcast of 13 November 1948, the soundtrack of
which was subsequently issued on disc, were not stellar names but both members
of the NBC Symphony Orchestra itself - concertmaster Mischa Mischakoff and
principal cellist Frank Miller. But whatever Mischakoff and Miller may have
lacked in public profile they more than made up for with the very obvious
empathy that they, as long term colleagues, display towards both each other
and Toscanini.

The 1948 performance is the better known. Featured as part of volume 8 of
RCA Victor Gold Seal’s mammoth Arturo Toscanini Collection in
the 1990s, it is consistently brisker than the earlier performance that we
have here.

1939

1948

I. Allegro

14:43

14:25

II.Andante

7:50

7:06

III. Vivace non troppo

7:44

7:30

That is not, however, to characterise the 1939 performance as generally sluggish.
Rather, it is a somewhat more lyrical and rhapsodic account, gaining - especially
in the andante - a degree of emotional intensity while sacrificing some
of the post-war account’s more purposeful, driven quality. The playing
from all sections of the hand-picked NBC orchestra is, needless to say, superb
and Andrew Rose’s expert XR re-mastering delivers a feeling of immediacy
that actually works very well with Studio 8H’s dry acoustics to offer
a real “in your face” sound (see http://www.pristineclassical.com/More/NaturalSound.html
for a fascinating explanation of the technique).

The sound is, however, rather less of a positive element in the 1938 recording
of the Second Symphony. We know that between 1937 and 1939 Studio 8H’s
sonic drawbacks - magnified further for radio listeners by the technology involved
in broadcasting - were causing some concern. Composer Virgil Thomson opined
that “the NBC hall is not a pleasant place to hear music” (Frank,
op.cit., p.33) while even a more favourably disposed critic such as Olin
Downes described a rather odd experience “as if you listened to each instrument
under the microscope” (ibid. p. 34). Later broadcasts and recordings
were improved - from 1939-41 by the addition of artificial resonance that, by
all accounts and to judge from the Double Concerto recording, improved matters
considerably and, from 1941 onwards, by structural work to the studio itself.
The 1938 symphony recording on this new disc had thus been made when conditions
were at their worst and, in spite of Pristine Audio’s sterling efforts,
quite frankly it shows.

Moreover, while the survival of any recording of this vintage is naturally welcome,
this particular account of the D major symphony is not significantly different
in approach to Toscanini’s well known 1952 Carnegie Hall recording and
so throws little if any new light on his approach to the work.

This is, then, very much an issue where the primary focus is on the concerto
and if you admire the work as much as the conductor evidently did, you will
certainly find the disc a worthwhile purchase.

One final note: given Toscanini’s huge public profile, these Studio 8H
broadcasts were something of a high society event at the time and do seem to
have attracted audiences who may not have been familiar with the normal conventions
of concert-going. They therefore applaud vigorously at the end of every movement
of the concerto. One can, across more than seventy years, surely see the expression
of annoyance on Arturo Toscanini’s famously irascible face.

Rob Maynard

Very much an issue where the primary focus is on the concerto of which we hear
a lyrical and rhapsodic account.